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Ambulance crisis 'plunges to new depths'

Laura Banks

Pressure on the Napthine government over slow ambulance response times is growing, after the ambulance union revealed the deaths of seven people in three days.

The Ambulance Employees Association highlighted the deaths on Saturday, saying Victoria's ambulance crisis had "plunged to new depths" and called for the premier to sack "incompetent Health Minister David Davis".

In each case, patients aged from 30 to 80 suffered cardiac arrest and waited at least 12 minutes for emergency ambulances.

The AEA said that on May 4, an 80-year-old Wantirna South man waited 18 minutes for an ambulance after suffering a heart attack, while a Hollands Landing man, 30, waited 27 minutes for an ambulance the following day. On May 6, a crew from Bittern took 24 minutes to reach a 73-year-old man

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and a 68-year-old Brookfield woman died after waiting 16 minutes for an ambulance following a heart attack.

Ambulance Employees Australia state assistant secretary Danny Hill said it was an "appalling" outcome.

"The government has declared its standard but has repeatedly failed to resource the service so that its own policy can be met. This inept government ... once again did nothing in its latest budget to fix the problems."

He said it was sad that Victorians could not rely on their emergency ambulance service for a "timely response" to a health crisis.

"David Davis has had his chances. It's time Denis Napthine acted on behalf of all Victorians and sacked this incompetent health minister," Mr Hill said.

Ambulance Victoria General Manager of Regional Services Tony Walker said the facts of each death were yet to be established, but a preliminary review suggested that several people were "clearly deceased" with no resuscitation started before triple-0 was called.

"There is a campaign by the union to continually misrepresent the survival rates of Victorians who experience cardiac arrest and a sudden-death collapse," Mr Walker said.

"Ambulance Victoria has introduced a range of reforms in recent years, including additional paramedics, roster changes and a computer-aided dispatch system.

"Evidence shows these reforms mean the Victorian survival rates from cardiac arrest have continued to improve in the past few years, making them among the world's best. In rural Victoria survival rates have, in fact, doubled in the past decade."

He said paramedics attended more than 5000 cases of cardiac arrest each year with about half of all patients in "shockable" heart rhythms able to survive to hospital, and almost 30 per cent were discharged from hospital alive.

Mr Walker said Ambulance Victoria was concerned that patient privacy and confidentiality was being breached by the public release of information and in doing so the public's confidence in their ambulance service was being undermined.

David Davis said the ambulance union had a track record of spreading misinformation in a bid to support its "greedy" demand for taxpayers to fund union activities.

"Who would be surprised that many of the claims by the hard left ambulance union, made in the middle of an EBA campaign, are often proven to be entirely incorrect," Mr Davis said.

"The hard-line, left-wing ambulance union and its stooges are running a political campaign in tandem with Labor, to whom they have donated almost $1 million in recent years."

Mr Davis said if the management of a particular case had not met proper outcomes, Ambulance Victoria would work with the family in the appropriate way.